It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...

Thorold Dickinson's 1949 British classic, based on Pushkin's short story, stars Anton Walbrook as Captain Suvorin, an impoverished military captain in 19th-century Russia. Like many of the time, he daringly admires the meritocratic genius of Russia's great enemy, Napoleon, and is obsessed with gambling. Suvorin is galvanised by the rumour that ugly old Countess Ranevskaya, played by Edith Evans, has sold her soul to the devil for the secret of winning at cards; he plans to offer her a chilling n find out more...